The 200% World Cup: France vs Germany – Live!

Good afternoon, sports fans! It seems like an age since we were last on the case over the 2014 World Cup finals, but we’re at, what I have come to understand is known as, the “business end” of the tournament. So, what will happen? Will sangfroid and caution win out over flair and imagination? Can the excellence of the matches that we have seen so far really continue now that the stakes are starting to rise? France and Germany, of course, have a history, most notably the infamous semi-final match played in Seville in 1982 when the West German goalkeeper Harald Schumaker attempting the head clean off the shoulders of France’s Patrick Battiston took a little shine off a three-three draw that was one of the finest matches in the history of the tournament.

Of this this year’s vintages, well, Germany have subequently failed to recreate the stellar highlights of their opening match demolition of Portugal, whilst France have looked like a threat since the very first game of the tournament. A pleasing to watch, fluid and attractive team to watch, France may just start this match as the favourites to win, but there really is very little between the two teams. We shall see whether these two teams can continue this tournament’s fine record of fascinating football. Join us shortly before five for more.

And c’est ca. Benzema drills one at Neuer’s casually upheld right arm and the whistle goes.
This is the way the French World Cup ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.
Shearer’s called it “a lack of urgency, a lack of spring,” and he’s absolutely right. Paul Pogba… Three dots after his name overstates his second-half contribution. Indeed, each pundit in turn has led with France’s general bleughness. Germany? They needed a rest after that 120 minutes against Algeria. And now they’ve had one.
Brazil/Colombia will be better – this was, after all, two northern European teams in early afternoon heat, almost as hot as here today…and it didn’t half show.
Dear me…

“Ozil…looked about three yards offside there.” – Pearce. Replays show him to be NO yards offside. “Not up to it” indeed.
I’m a bit bored too. Poor second half. Or “intriguing,” as Lawrenson has just suggested.
Go Europe!!!

Mind you, great last-ditch tackle on Valbuena there, by…erm…Benzema.
And Pearce and Lawrenson’s joke French is worse than mine. “Apres tu”? “Les Les Bleus”?
Still, as Lawro has just said: “Here’s the game in a nutshell.” No, me neither.

What have Pearce and Lawrenson got against the “assistant on this near side”? Watched the first half-hour sans bolox and thought the flag man got most things about right. Did I miss him flag someone offside from a throw-in???

I’ve become fixated on the referee for this match. He has magnificently old-fashioned hair. He basically looks like my grandpa. Having looked him up on Wikipedia, I discover he’s only five years older than me.

I’ve had this creeping feeling for the last few matches that all of this cleverness is going to come back to bite Manuel Neuer on the arse. It may be today, it may be next week, it may be next year. But he’s going to have a calamity one day that will have the name Neuer associated with goalkeeping as much as Ronnie Rosenthal is with finishing.

The thing that always strikes me about Germany is how good they are at heading the ball. This is not as throwaway a point as it sounds. It’s all about superior technical skill. German footballers learn early how to do the nuts and bolts things that players from, say, England are still having to use all 68 of their IQ points to concentrate hard on when they’re international footballers.

I was disrupted by looking at a really cute picture of a slow loris, there. Seven minutes played, all quiet on the western front – sorry about that: too soon? – apart from a daisy-cutter from Karim Benzama which just dribbled tamely wide of Neuer’s right hand post.

So, do these message work? I’m trying to imagine someone sitting in front of the television saying, “Well, shit, yeah. I’d never looked at it like that before. I should probably be less racist in the future. Thanks, Sepp. You’ve changed my life.”

If they were serious about it, they could, you know, rigorously enforce it.

Open wider than ever for some soccer, sports fans. This is your actual real-life PROPER World Cup match. But who will win? I’m very dismissive of well-paid pundits who are unwilling to stick their neck out and make predictions, so it falls to us very poorly paid pundits to do the job for them.

About The Author

Ian began writing Twohundredpercent in May 2006. He lives in Brighton. He has also written for, amongst others, Pitch Invasion, FC Business Magazine, The Score, When Saturday Comes, Stand Against Modern Football and The Football Supporter. Ian was the first winner of the Socrates Award For Not Being Dead Yet at the 2010 NOPA awards for football bloggers.